


Atonement

by BiteMeTechie (The_Injustice_Trinity)



Category: Batman (Movies 1989-1997)
Genre: Ableism, Bestiality (Implied), Canon-Typical Violence, Child Neglect (Implied), Classism, Gen, Murder (Implied), Strangely Macabre but Fluffy?, Suspense, Twisted Family Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 03:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1672367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Injustice_Trinity/pseuds/BiteMeTechie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Wayne suspected that Oswald Cobblepot knew who his parents really were long before he made a bid for mayor as Max Shreck's puppet. Oh, how right he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atonement

**Author's Note:**

> _This story was written for the Free For All Fic For All--or FFAFFA for short--over on the Ask the Squishykins tumblr, wherein Twinings and I offer ourselves up to fill as many fic prompts as humanly possible with stories ranging in length from 100 to 16,000 words._
> 
> _Prompts: Batman Returns Penguin meets his parents as an adult; Batman Returns Penguin has a happy childhood memory._
> 
> _**In Depth Trigger Warnings** : mentions of parental neglect, threats of cruelty to animals, ableist language/attitudes, mentions of bestiality, mentions of violence against sex workers, rampant classism; the Cobblepots are generally unpleasant people with unpleasant attitudes toward just about everyone not in their social set. I’m pretty sure I’ve covered everything, but please let me know if there’s triggery material that I’ve neglected to mention._
> 
>   _Notes: I split the difference between the prompts and set this when Oswald is thirteen because I am a smartass: he is legally a child, yet in many circles, a man._

The circus came to town once or twice a year, bringing with it the smells of fresh buttered popcorn, damp hay and elephant manure to mingle with the oppressive smog that cloaked Gotham City. It bustled in by rail, shuddering into the most deserted depot near the county fairgrounds and ousted the hobos from the place they called home while on the lookout for work. Without fail, thirty-six hours later, the tent poles were raised and stretched over with fabric, the rigged carnival games were set up and the barkers were shouting “Right this way! Step right up!” to talk willing rubes out of their hard earned money.

Sometimes, C.C. Haly and Norton Bros. Circus roared into town with the glitter of its death defying aerialists and tightrope walkers. Always written up in the biggest newspapers with rave reviews, Haly’s made a considerable profit every time it stopped in Gotham, bringing in crowds from every income bracket and leaving everyone from the socialites to the kids from the East End starry eyed with awe.

Other times, Hill’s Circus made its home on the outskirts of the metropolis for a few weeks, sending its colorful staff out into the city to beckon people with dazzling magical feats in impossible locations—illusions so convincing it was easy to believe they were just part of Gotham that could only be tapped into by the skilled fingers of Hill’s performers. While smaller than Haly’s Circus, it was no less respectable, and had its own daring, rakish charm with its human cannonball act and black suited Svengalis flanked by curvy assistants in sequined gowns.

While Haly’s and Hill’s both hit Gotham on a regular basis, it was on rare occasion that the ramshackle tents and ghoulish performers of the Red Triangle Circus tempted citizens with promises of the last real freak show on the east coast. Once every few years, usually in the late fall, posters bleeding smeared ink found themselves plastered to street lights and the sides of buildings, boasting crude, haunting illustrations of the macabre and unsettling.

The Red Triangle drew a few ordinary people, but the majority were voyeurs and thrill seekers, more interested in staring with horrified, fascinated eyes at what they deemed abnormal, deformed and grotesque than the whimsy of a dozen clowns being able to fit into one tiny car. The scarcity of its visits gave the troupe an air mystery, and its whispered reputation gained a shade of the sinister from the idle playground gossip of children who heard heavily embellished stories about it from their older siblings.

None of that mattered to the Cobblepots, of course, as such common rumors were far beneath their notice. Tucker and Esther Cobblepot were not circus-goers, no matter what sort wound its way into town, and knew as much about its comings and goings as they knew about washing their own socks. In France, where they wintered and the Cirque Medrano was home to true circus artists, perhaps they might have considered it, but certainly _not_ in Gotham City and never would they have patronized so _lowly_ a troupe as the Red Triangle. Not without extreme extenuating circumstances. It was loud, it was dirty and it was crowded. Worst of all, it was _poor_.

Clutching a dainty lace handkerchief to her nose to block out the distasteful stench of the circus animals in their cages, Esther pulled her albino mink stole around her shoulders and gave a derisive sniff in the direction of an organ grinder. The tattered box in his hands pumped out a tune closer to an off-kilter, tinkling funeral dirge than a cheerful circus calliope, and a trained monkey did tricks on it, holding out its hat to her looking for reward. “Mangy little creature, isn’t it?”

The organ grinder gave her a drowsy smile that bordered on being terrifying, but the monkey took offense. It screeched and put its hat back on its head, leaped down to the ground at her feet and scooped up a tiny handful of straw to fling at her. It shook its fists and made irritable sounds.

With her eyes narrowed, she looked to the organ grinder and opened her clutch bag with a noisy, pointed snap. “How much do you want for that _thing_?” she asked. “I could use a new _handbag._ ”

It screeched at her again and scrambled up the organ grinder’s trouser leg, then his chest, until it took its place on his shoulder like a loyal parrot. It wrapped its tail around his neck possessively and threatened her with a hiss.

“Come, dear.” Tucker’s hand at her elbow led her away. “We mustn’t draw attention.”

“Tucky, darling,” Esther said, “the fact that we _bathe_ is enough to make us notable amongst this…” A clown with runny make-up blew a raspberry at her, making her mouth twist into a sneer of disgust. “This… _rabble._ ”

"Be strong, dear," Tucker murmured in his wife’s ear, giving her arm a supportive squeeze. “We’ll be gone before you know it.”

A melodramatic sigh with the promise of a sob in its tone rewarded his weak reassurance. “Oh, I hate this awful place, these awful people. Why must it be in Gotham? If anyone sees us here, I’ll simply _die_.”

“I have every intention of making it go away, dear.”

With the hand he wasn’t using to guide her, Tucker rifled in the interior pocket of his coat and drew out the folded sheet of paper within. He opened it with a foreboding rustle. Once upon a time, it had been nothing but a flier advertising the Red Triangle freak show—the sword swallower, the tattooed contortionist, on and on and on—but someone had since used it to relay a message. Esther glanced at it and gave a little shudder at reading the words scribbled beneath one of the performer's portraits: _Tonight. Under the big top. Or else_.

What did the threat mean? What did the person who made it know about them? It didn’t matter. It could have been any one of a million things. After all, neither she, nor Tucker, were particularly virtuous citizens behind closed doors. The Cobblepot fortune had bred in them a sense of being above the rules of ordinary society, and with good reason. There was nothing enough money couldn’t erase. Whether this was about his tax evasion and the numerous escorts he’d thrown in the harbor or her smuggling of stolen antiquities into Gotham and sexual dalliances with her prized doberman pinschers, it made no difference. Tucker would hush it up just as he’d done in the past and they would continue their decadent lives as they always had, safe behind their masks of elegance and respectability.

The closer they came to the big top, the more forward movement felt like swimming upstream in molasses. The Cobblepots were pushed and shoved and jostled in the hustle and bustle of the people leaving the circus grounds; for every ten feet they gained toward their destination, it seemed they lost three from the force of the crowd going in the other direction. The last performance of the evening must have just let out, loosing its audience on the city in an overpowering swirl of clashing cheap perfumes, body odor and cotton candy smells that made for a churning stomach and a dizzy head. It was enough to make Esther feel faint and send her groping for smelling salts.

Tucker muttered to her, useless words meant to bolster her that got lost in the laughter and shouts of the crowd. He continued his pointless attempt at comfort until the press of people began to thin out and her snapping at him to stop could be heard. Not one to argue, he went silent. They forced their way through the clump of stragglers standing around the main circus tent and finally passed through the “doorway” of the big top that was nothing more than strategically draped fabric.

The thick canvas blotted out much of the noise from outside. Thought not silent, it remained an eerie contrast to the racket beyond the tent’s walls, and grew more so as they passed the rickety-looking risers around the circus ring.

Only one person stood beneath the peak of the big top, under the safety net for the acrobats and between two cannons painted in shades that must have been bright and cheery in the distant past. The ringmaster in his crimson coat with gold braid spilling over the shoulders gave them a welcoming grin that was too white, too wide. He swept his arms out, one hand clutching a riding crop, and a sound like thunder shattered the quiet.

“Come one!”

An explosion of light from within the center ring blinded the Cobblepots and forced them to stop dead in their tracks. Esther buried her face in her husband’s shoulder; Tucker held up his hand in front of his eyes to block the brightness. Indistinct shapes moved around the ringmaster as he revolved slowly where he stood, beckoning to the unseen things at the edges of the center ring. The rustling of fabric and demented giggles echoed from every corner of the tent.

“Come all!”

Another explosion, this time attended by the sound of whistling streamers and confetti fluttering in the still air. Banners of red and yellow unfurled as they sailed overhead, between two acrobats who had not been there moments before. They curled their lithe bodies around their swings as they moved to and fro, bending and stretching in shapes that made little sense. One blew kisses at the Cobblepots from a tarry mouth slicked with grease paint. A downfall of pale sparks flickered and died in the dazzling light. Hands, from somewhere, pushed the Cobblepots forward and into the ring. Esther’s mink left her shoulders. Tucker’s coat was torn from his.

“To the greatest show…” The light began to fade around the ringmaster. Behind him, the forms that had been nothing more than outlines materialized and became solid. A dozen circus performers—tall, squat, beautiful, grotesque—formed a wall between the cannons. They stared with dead, cold eyes at the Cobblepots, even as a fire lit in the depths of the ringmaster’s. “…on Earth.”

Esther blinked a dozen times as her eyes burned and watered. Beside her, Tucker did the same.

”You do know how to make an entrance,” the ringmaster said with a flourish of his riding crop and a grin that stretched his face too far to be real. Behind him—behind the Cobblepots, as well, they realized too late—came an answering titter of mocking laughter. They were surrounded.

A slender female clown turned an lazy cartwheel on the ground in front of them, Esther’s mink wrapped around her torso and smudged with dirt and greasepaint. “Gee,” her helium light voice squeaked as she landed on her feet and winked at Tucker with a flirty tilt of her head, “this thing is fan _tas_ tic.” She flipped the luxurious fur over her shoulder, letting one end drag in the dirt.

“Please, please,” the ringmaster said as two chairs were placed before them, seemingly pulled from thin air. “Have a seat.”

Tucker’s hand found its way to Esther’s shoulder and drew her closer. They did not comply.

“You’re the guests of honor,” the ringmaster continued, eyes gleaming. A trace of an unspoken threat hovered in the air as he motioned to the offered seats. “Sit. Down.”

Meaty hands clamped down on Esther’s arms, tearing her from the security of her husband’s grasp. One of the circus strongmen, his skin covered in a sheen of sweat and his thick, solid body barely contained in a leopard print costume, took hold of Tucker and shoved him toward one of the chairs. Esther shrieked when her feet left the ground and she was carried to the other chair, plunked down on the hard, worn wood with little care for her comfort. Tucker made the mistake of trying to stand after being pushed into the chair; he was swatted down into his seat by a fist so large that it easily could have crushed his throat.

“That’s better.” The ringmaster gave them a bow and stepped aside to reveal the clump of people behind him more fully. The band of misfits was recognizable from the circus flier that had been sent to the Cobblepot Estate: the fat little sword swallower, cramming a blade right down his throat in front of their eyes; the towering woman stroking her beard; the tattooed contortionist smoking a cigarette that was held between her toes; the short man thoughtfully chewing on a lightbulb…

“Mister and Missus Cobblepot.” The bearded lady smiled serenely down at them with her hands folded in front of her, every inch the gracious hostess. “How kind of you to accept our invitation. We do hope you’ll enjoy your time with us.”

Tucker drew himself up as much as he dared, his spine stiffening with resolve. “How much do you want?”

The perfectly sculpted eyebrows on the bearded lady’s face rose.

“This is a kidnapping, is it not?” Tucker’s eyes swept from one face to another. “Ransom is your goal, I suppose? So: how much do you want? Let’s do away with all these theatrics and get down to it.”

Derisive laughter met his steely voice. The bearded lady gave a smiling shake of her head and gestured at the others beside her. The freaks parted enough to allow a glimpse at a small, round body beyond their cluster, just outside the ring, cloaked in shadow.

"Come along, darling." The bearded lady beckoned to the darkness with her hand.

After a moment’s hesitation, a child stepped into the light. Sullen and ugly, he waddled into the welcoming bunch of sideshow freaks with wary eyes. His roly-poly body bulged from within a striped swimsuit, a relic from a bygone era that stretched from his shoulders to his knees, and his hands clenched into fat little fists. His skin was pale and waxy, yet appeared damp, and his sunken eyes bore holes in them, turning from Tucker’s face to Esther’s. His hands opened and closed a few times, revealing fingers fused together into knobby, clawed flippers.

"Sweetheart," the bearded lady crouched next to him and put her hands on his round shoulders in a gentle, maternal gesture, "meet your mummy and daddy."

The boy’s expression remained blank and emotionless, even as the color drained from Esther’s face and her eyes rolled in her head. The clown with her purloined mink gave her a slap across the face that kept her from sliding into blissful unconsciousness.

“We have no children.” Tucker’s face became pinched, his upper lip curling with contempt.

“Well,” the contortionist blew a puff of smoke toward his face and gave a throaty laugh, “not anymore, you don’t.”

“We have no children,” he insisted, glaring at the child as though daring him to contradict the statement. The boy shrank a little beside the bearded lady, who squeezed his shoulder to comfort him.

The short man stopped chewing his light bulb long enough to wipe his mouth. Blood smeared from one corner to the other as he did so. “Funny…he looks an awful lot like—”

“We have no children!” Spittle flew from Tucker’s mouth, his eyes bulging as he screamed at the little man. “You can’t prove that we do!”

The ringmaster put his face very near to Tucker’s ear and hissed, “Can’t we?”

“Impossible.”

“Let me spin you a little scenario,” the ringmaster murmured. “A deformed foundling child, sold to the circus by a less than reputable orphanage. A nurse who kept meticulous records, give or take a detail or two, even when ordered to burn them. And someone smart enough to connect the dots…”

Tucker blanched and a sweat broke out on his forehead. “How much do you want?”

The ringmaster breathed a chuckle, drawing back and surveying the Cobblepots with scorn.

“How much?!” Tucker stomped his feet and screeched at the top of his lungs. “No price is too high!”

The bearded lady shook her head and gave a ‘tsk.’ “Such awful parents.”

At last, Esther found her voice. “Can you blame us? Look at him! We were in shock! ” She looked from face to face for sympathy and received none. “He’s—”

"A monster?" The strongman’s deep, honeyed words reverberated through her bones.

"A _freak_?” The contortionist put her hands on the ground and twisted her torso until her ankles were next to her ears.

The clown with Esther’s mink wiped away an imaginary tear and mocked, “Boo hoo for you!”

"You don’t understand." Tears, not of sadness, but of fear, streaked their way down her cheeks. "He was a beastly child."

“Really?” The bearded lady leaned forward to stare at Esther’s face. “I can’t imagine where he might have inherited that from.”

“Now see here—hlk!” Tucker’s protest was cut off by a greasy, stained rag being stuffed in his mouth.

Esther’s head snapped around to look at him as the makeshift gag was crammed deep in his throat, surely blocking off his air supply. “Please—“

“Ho hum. You guys sure do yap a lot,” the clown chirped, dropping the mink and bouncing away. Above her the acrobats somersaulted through the air and traded places on their swings, a surreal display that bordered on the comical under the circumstances.

“What do you want from us?” Esther’s lower lip trembled and shook, tears falling free from her lashes.

“It’s not what we want,” the bearded lady said, her tone kind and gentle. “It’s what our little man wants. We do indulge him so. Tell them what you’d like, darling. It’s your time to shine.”

The boy—the branch of the Cobblepot family tree that Esther and Tucker had so savagely lopped off years before—turned his eyes from his mother’s face to his father’s, then back again. His voice curled from his mouth in a ragged, bitter croak: “I want to know my name.”

Confusion flirted with Esther’s expression. “I thought—but—“

“As I said,” the ringmaster spoke, “a nurse with meticulous records, give or take a detail or two.”

“We…” Esther drew a shuddering breath and dropped her eyes from the boy’s face. “We named our son…”

The strongman grabbed Tucker by the hair and pulled his head back to expose his throat. In answer, the sword swallower pulled the blade from his gullet and pointed it at the vulnerable flesh. “Your what?”

Esther began again, forcing words past broken sobbing, “Our son—“

“Who?” The contortionist put a hand to her ear, curved to amplify the sound. “Don’t talk about him as if he isn’t here.”

“You!” Esther cried, her voice cracking as she looked at the child. “We named you Oswald!”

The tip of the sword withdrew from the place a Tucker’s throat where his pulse ticked rapidly. His eyes were wide, wild with panic. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

For a long moment, the only sound under the big top was the creaking of the acrobat’s swings and Esther’s sobs as they gradually ebbed and became pathetic, wheezing whimpers.

“Oswald,” the boy said quietly, tasting the name and rolling it around in his mouth. He looked at the bearded lady with a monstrous frown that made him even more hideous. “I don’t like it.”

The bearded lady stroked his cheek. “You don’t have to keep it. Now, say thank you. It’s only polite.”

“Thank you.”

Esther took a deep breath, quivering in her seat and looked at Tucker, then back to the bearded lady. “Is…is that all you wanted?”

The smile the bearded lady gave her was so soft it neared angelic. It made a hysterical giggle bubble up out of her mouth. Whether it was borne of relief or dread, Esther couldn’t tell.

“One side!” The clown who’d wandered off sprang back through the sideshow freaks, her hands behind her back to conceal something, and took a place beside the bearded lady and her charge. With an open, gleeful expression, she drew her hands out and presented their contents to the boy.

The laughter withered into silence. In one hand, there sat a colorful party hat. In the other, bedecked with ribbons…oh, God.

Suddenly, Esther felt faint.

The clown placed the hat on the boy’s head and snapped the strap into place. She grinned and chucked him on one of his generous chins, then transferred the gift in her hand to his. “Go get ‘em, slugger.”

The boy smiled—the first smile she’d ever seen on his face—and approached his father, as a boisterous chorus of _For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow_ arose from the circus folk.

The screaming started before Esther could register the fact that she began making sounds. _No! Stop! Why?!_ The words all blurred together into an endless drone of anguished shrieks, swallowed up by the singing. _Why Why Why No Why_

Oswald Cobblepot raised the baseball bat above his head. “Happy birthday to me.”


End file.
